The background: Satellites.01, the debut album by Satellites, has been getting exceptional reviews. And although on its limited release last year – a few hundred copies sent to a few select shops (remember shops?) – it hardly troubled any of the main record-of-the-year critics' lists, to those that heard it it was a manna-from-heaven affair, one of those that get people talking in terms of a renewed faith in the art of the album. It felt like a special record, one that had special care lavished on it, with each of the 500 copies appearing in double-vinyl form and featuring liner notes screen-printed on to green plastic inserts. It even came with a sticker on the front bearing the message: "It doesn't matter who wrote this album. What matters is that it needed to be written."

And now it is being more widely distributed, with the intention that more people will catch on (there's even a Satellites.02 pencilled in for March). There's certainly no reason for Satellites.01 to remain a secret, nor for the band to stay a cult. We say band: actually, it's one man, Johnny Vic, a Londoner now living in Copenhagen who sings and apparently handles all the guitar, piano, horn and string parts. There's even a glockenspiel on one song. Not that the glockenspiel is a particularly tough instrument to master on its own, just that while you're multi-tracking your vocals so that they resemble a male choir, playing electric guitar and arranging the keyboard and rhythm parts, it might prove a little tricky to get right.

That voice is crying out to be described as warm and rich, even if for some it will be a blank, lugubrious croon too far, unless you happen to like the idea of listening to Matt Johnson of the The for all eternity. But it does the job of conveying manly sensitivity on an album about dealing with the daily struggles of being, well, a man: a generic Everyman rather than Vic Himself, hence the bit on that sticker about it not mattering who lies behind these songs. But the sleeve message does confirm that this is a serious piece of work whose songs were wrenched from the soul of the creator. That may be true of a lot of records; it's just that Vic wears his brooding emotionalism on his sleeve.

It's music for fans of the National, Elbow, Tindersticks and Richard Hawley (when he's not in guitar-terrorist mode), and if you were being unkind you might decide to chuck Coldplay and Snow Patrol on to that list. The doleful vocals over gently epic, lushly orchestrated piano rock that soundtracks Vic's maudlin meditations – you could easily imagine this stuff catching on with that kind of audience. Just as you could easily imagine, if you weren't part of that demographic, being bored out of your mind by the consistently cosy and dimly snug atmosphere. It's all so tasteful, the playing and arrangements so "tasty", after a while you'll be dying for something tasteless, a chunk of tacky chart pop, anything to break the mood of sorrowful contemplation and wistful jubilation – even the euphoric codas are sensibly reined in. Still, if you had one of those Christmasses and are suffering from melancholia, this might provide the cure. Either that or make it worse.